For every maggot willing to work off the books for , the tall man in the black suit had his own.
One of them was, at the moment, busy talking to a fire hydrant.
The fact that the fire hydrant was actively participating in the conversation, was just part of the experience that was Salad Fingers.
If Mr. Tepes employed disgusting, the tall man in the black suit employed batshit crazy.
Batshit crazy has it's uses.
And the disgusting little creep now arguing with a gas meter because the fire hydrant stormed off in an angry snit, snow knee deep around him… her… it… whatever Salad Fingers was, was useful.
Because for every job, there is the right tool, no matter how bent.
That's just how the world works, regardless of which world it is.
Anyway, batshit crazy works cheap.
Cheaper than maggots, anyway.
Having absently shoved his minder, a heavyset middle-aged Red Cross nurse from Shropshire, off a dock so that she drowned, screams unnoticed in the waters of the French port of Saint-Nazaire, the permanently shell-shocked, hideously disfigured and very British Tommy Andrews, formerly of the BEF, and his dressing gown, had been steered by a well-meaning passerby onto a troopship headed back to the United States for demobilization.
In June 1918.
Not that time mattered to Salad Fingers. As far as Salad Fingers was concerned, time was something that happened to other people.
Anyway…10 decades and some change later plus more than one oblivious ramble across the continent of North America with the occasional wrong turn into the Southern Hemisphere, Salad Fingers happily wandered his own personal No Man's Land, remembering very little of his past life except for bedraggled black feathers where there hadn't been bedraggled black feathers before, friends, family, and lots of good food.
Well, for the moment, anyway.
This was because Salad Fingers had scrambled into a dumpster he'd mistaken as his little dugout shack in No Man's Land. After eating the family of racoons feeding on a rancid sludge of nasty bits of beer-soaked corn and gravy studded with stale chicken nuggets, Salad Fingers contentedly settled down for a long, ever so lovely chat with his finger puppets, surrounded by torn bits of fur and an assortment of bloody striped tails.
Which didn't bother Salad Fingers – it'd been a good while since he'd last had roast chicken in such quantity as well as quality.
"What the hell are y'doin' in my dumpster?!" Someone barked, causing Salad Fingers to drop his finger puppets with a squeal. "Geddout!"
"Milford Cubicle, as I live and breathe! A pleasure to see you again this fine morning!" he whined congenially, clutching his only friends to his emaciated torso to keep them from running away and leaving him to face this unexpected guest alone. Still, company was company. Glassmother wouldn't like for him to be rude.
To please Glassmother, Salad Fingers graciously swept one of his broomstick arms expansively in a gesture of hospitality.
Harry, the large, perpetually angry bar owner who'd been tossing out the night's trash yanked the strange little creature up by that arm, only to hastily dump him-her-it-whatever into the snow in disgust, wiping his large, meaty hands frantically on his beer-splattered apron as the snow Salad Fingers landed on rapidly turned a nasty shade of brown.
"Now, now, let's not be hasty, dear sir!" Salad Fingers said placatingly from his sprawl. "We're comrades in arms. We were introduced at the Battle of the Somme, remember? Right after Bobby got his head taken clean off by a daisy cutter right next to me? …and an egg McMuffin. That will be $14.99 plus tax. Please drive to the next window!" Salad Fingers said, accent going from somewhere in the U.K. to Oregon and back again, "Never did get his brain scraped from my coat. The smell was simply dreadful, lasted for days!"
Harry stepped back. RADs sometimes patronized his bar. But nothing like Salad Fingers and Salad Fingers's crazy had ever crossed his threshold, much the less infested his dumpster!
The two locked eyes for a second, snow falling wetly around them.
Salad Fingers politely held up the severed head of a raccoon, "Care for a drumstick?"
"No!" Harry gagged, recoiling, "Now scram before I call the cops!"
"But sir, please, I implore you! Let me stay - pass the salt, Raina - Narancia, SIT STILL! ! You almost spilled orange juice on Maggie!" Salad Fingers paused, blinked his nearly lidless bloodshot saucer eyes before continuing: "One more night in a real bed, my good sir? Before I'm sent back to the Front? Please?"
The Hubert-person, doubtlessly a copper, glared down at Salad Fingers, obviously annoyed by his reminder that there was, after all, a war going on, complete with blokes in silly hats with spikes on, and random explosions in the middle of the night.
Which made getting a good night's sleep quite difficult.
Salad Finger tittered, skeletal remaining fingers dancing like roaches flipped on their backs even as they proffered the severed raccoon head placatingly, "Drumstick? Puck, we have work this afternoon. No slacking off this time!" He said conversationally, one hand now absently stimming on the rusty side of the dumpster, puppets and bloody offering forgotten. "Oh!" he said suddenly, "I've forgotten my manners, care for a drumstick?" Salad Fingers held up the nasty thing with it's filmed over eyes and gaping jaws.
"No!" Nauseated, the former pro boxer smacked the detached head aside before grabbing the scruff of Salad Finger's grimy neck, "Stay outta my damn dumpster!" he snarled.
"Oh, please Mr. Cubicle, my friends are in there! We have to dig them out since the boches dropp-aaaaaaaaaak, incoming-gurgle!" The wretched creature that Tolkien based a character on in at least four of his books shrieked, the remains of four or five collars choking him.
"Oh all right!" Harry said, suddenly filled with pity, adding, "Y'got five minutes!" He dropped the smelly bastard with it's raw eyes and Jack o' Lantern teeth, who once more groveled towards him in a spreading brown trail.
Having had enough crazy as well as stank for the day, Harry quickly stepped back.
But not fast enough: "Oh THANK you Milford Cubicle, Thank YOU!" Salad Fingers was now hugging Harry around the knees.
Harry somehow managed to push him away without actually touching him, Salad Fingers left a nasty stain on his new, clean BBQ apron, which, along with his pants, crumbled away unnoticed where Salad Fingers had touched them with the acrid stench of burning garlic.
"SCRAM!" Harry pointed down the alley towards the street where a snowplow grunted past.
"Bye bye!" Salad Fingers giggled, unnaturally long fingers tipped with dirty, jagged nails waving merrily.
Hands itching and burning for no good reason, Harry looked down at where his pants and apron were dissolving, and with a yell fled back inside his bar in search of a sink.
Or perhaps a fire extinguisher
Freed from the burden of uninvited guests Salad Fingers scrambled back into the dumpster, no, his shack, to rescue his beloved finger puppets.
"Jeremy Fisher, dear friend, have you seen Marjory Stewart-Baxter lately?" He asked a ratty finger puppet made from brown felt and frayed yarn. He was named after a childhood favorite, or maybe an old friend who'd died in the Great War.
Possibly of the Spanish Influenza. Or maybe a land mine.
But then again, perhaps Jeremy was an accident-prone frog who wore trousers.
In a book.
Flu, book, or grenade, it didn't matter if Jeremy Fisher was a frog or a man. Jeremy Fisher was Jeremy Fisher, and along with Salad Fingers's other toys, as real and alive as he was.
He wiggled his fingers, Hubert Cumberdale, a white-bodied puppet with bedraggled red hair shedding from his misshapen vinyl head, didn't answer. Instead, he grinned vacantly up at the gray sky all buck teeth and freckled cheeks, having been found lying soggy and abandoned on a playground after a heavy storm sometime in the fifties by Salad Fingers.
No, no, that wasn't quite right. Hubert Cumberdale died coughing up his lungs, having forgotten his gas mask at the worst possible time.
But here Hubie was, a puppet. How jolly!
Salad Fingers dug around some more before pulling out another red-headed puppet.
"Marjory. Dear, DEAR Marjory!" Salad Fingers emitted a gurgling laugh, "What have I told you about, about, ab-about - Don't talk to that guy, he's a real jerk! - about sleeping in late?"
He tittered, putting her on one long finger, saying in a falsetto voice, "Oh, I say, now do hurry, we m-must be off now."
Packing the only friends left to him in the whole wide world, (Or was that worlds? It was hard to tell sometimes.) in the remains of an old khaki knapsack that was more a mass of loose, worn threads than a canvas bag, Salad Fingers dropped down from the lip of the disputed dumpster. (Or was that his shack in No Man's Land?) and shambled through the falling snow towards a storm drain, except a large black raven landed beside him on a garbage can, and cawed.
Loudly.
Salad Fingers started violently. Then he said in his soft, child-like voice, "Oh, why hello there, Kenneth. Wherever have you been keeping yourself, dear chum?"